The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) today announced that Columbia Technology Ventures (Columbia) will administer the state’s highly successful Entrepreneurs-In-Residence (EIR) program which provides mentoring and coaching at no cost to emerging clean energy companies. Accelerating the commercialization of promising new clean energy businesses supports Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s fight against climate change and his Green New Deal, a landmark plan that provides for a just transition to clean energy that spurs growth of the green economy.

Alicia Barton, President and CEO, NYSERDA, said, “Governor Cuomo’s nation-leading Green New Deal has put New York at the forefront of the global clean energy transition, and supporting our state’s home-grown innovators and entrepreneurs will be a key part of our strategy to tackle the climate crisis. NYSERDA is pleased to be partnering with Columbia Technology Ventures to provide the resources needed for promising cleantech startups to accelerate their growth and path to market, and to build even greater momentum in New York’s thriving cleantech economy.”

The program has expanded and now includes more than 40 EIRs who are entrepreneurs, business executives, subject matter experts and investors that provide a broad range of advisory services to emerging companies throughout the state. Services include providing guidance tailored to specific projects and business operations areas such as staffing for growth, budget management, resource planning, capital raising, strategic partnering and board management. The goal is to help promising entrepreneurs accelerate their path to commercialization by securing investment and partnerships, scaling up their companies, and achieving commercial success.

Since the program was launched in 2009, EIRs have provided mentoring services for more than 235 projects with 160 companies. As a result, EIR-assisted companies have generated more than $21 million in revenue, received $17 million in grants and raised over $20 million in private capital as they worked to commercialize products that contributed to New York’s clean energy economy.

Columbia will build on the momentum of the state’s successful program by developing new services to further support emerging clean energy companies. It has extensive experience in helping startup companies accelerate the introduction of their technologies into the marketplace. Columbia supports several accelerators as well as PowerBridgeNY, a clean energy proof-of-concept center supported by NYSERDA which accelerates the commercialization of clean energy-related technologies by linking companies to researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, and the broader ecosystem.

Jim Aloise, Assistant Vice President and Director of Strategic Initiatives, Columbia, said, “NYSERDA’s EIR Program has been tremendously successful and we look forward to continuing to offer these services to promising clean energy startups. We are excited by the opportunity to work together with the New York State ecosystem in developing new innovative services that help even more clean energy startups succeed.”

NYSERDA’s EIR program supports Governor Cuomo’s Green New Deal, a nation-leading clean energy and jobs agenda that puts New York on a path to carbon neutrality. Today’s announcement builds on Governor Cuomo’s October 2018 announcement regarding the availability of $27.5 million in funding for workforce development and training initiatives to help prepare New Yorkers for the clean energy industry’s growing job opportunities. Clean energy jobs in New York are already growing at double the statewide average employment growth rate and with current trajectories, we expect to see over 100,000 more jobs in this sector in the years ahead.

The EIR program is a critical component of the state’s overall approach to make New York the prominent place in the world for entrepreneurs to start and build clean energy businesses. In addition to the EIR program, NYSERDA supports six cleantech incubators throughout the state (Binghamton, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, New York City and Long Island), offers numerous direct funding opportunities, and administers the 76West Clean Energy Competition, one of the largest competitions in the nation focused on supporting and growing emerging clean energy businesses and economic development, among other programs. As a result of NYSERDA’s technology investments and business development support, more than 430 new and improved clean energy products have been commercialized.

New York State’s Green New DealGovernor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Green New Deal, the nation’s leading clean energy and jobs agenda, will aggressively put New York State on a path to economy-wide carbon neutrality under a strategy to be developed by the Climate Action Council of state, workforce and environmental justice experts. It provides for a just transition to clean energy, spurring the growth of the green economy and, when passed, will statutorily mandate New York's power be 100 percent clean and carbon-free by 2040, one of the most aggressive goals in the U.S. The cornerstone of this newly proposed mandate is a significant increase of New York's successful Clean Energy Standard to 70 percent renewable electricity by 2030. As part of the unprecedented ramp-up of renewable energy, New York has already invested $2.9 billion into 46 large-scale renewable projects across the state as it significantly increases its clean energy targets, such as: quadrupling New York's offshore wind target to a nation-leading 9,000 megawatts by 2035 to doubling distributed solar deployment to 6,000 megawatts by 2025 to deploying 3,000 megawatts of energy storage by 2030. To support this ambitious work, NY Green Bank intends to use its expertise in overcoming financing gaps to foster greater environmental impacts per public dollar by raising over $1 billion in third party funds to expand climate financing availability across New York and the rest of North America.